Tag Archives: rape

“Rape”: A Continuation

Posted on September 7, 2012 by | 11 comments

The second post I ever wrote on this blog was about the word “rape,” and since then it has not ceased to be an issue. A number of events have occurred in the past couple of months, and re-reading many of them this week has reminded me what a big deal it can be.

About a month ago stand-up comedian Daniel Tosh was doing a show when an audience member commented on the bit he was doing. He had been going on about how hilarious rape jokes were [his position: always], when the woman interrupted him by yelling “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” She reports that Tosh responded with the words: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now?”

John Seavey, one of the writers on Mightygodking, wrote a response to what happened, titled “From the “How To Be A Decent Human Being” File….” In it he decried Tosh’s response to the woman, and basically lay down that freedom of speech or not, threatening someone sexually is not something you ever do.

I talked to Gordon about this yesterday, and not to turn this into another “Evan and Gordon Talk” post, but I had to add just a little of our conclusion to this one:

[after agreeing that probably no one in the audience actually took Tosh’s words “seriously.”]

EVAN: I mean, I guess we can both be on the level that to at least one member involved, Tosh, it was not a threat.

GORDON: Agreed. You also promised to crap in my bed. [I will not deny this -E.]

EVAN: Valid, but 1/5 of all Gordons don’t have their beds crapped in.

Similar to my first post on the word, there are those out there who believe that this is all a matter of sensitivity. Comedians like Louis C.K. have defended Tosh‘s right to free speech. Others on the internet have taken more creative avenues to back up the “rape joke” that was made [warning for language and content]:


The video, for those who don’t feel like or want to watch it, is a press conference with the character “F-ck Bot 5000.” He answers that rape jokes are off limits, while jokes about “9/11,” “dead babies,” and “making fun of autistic children” are perfectly acceptable. The point being, from what I can tell, that people are being overly sensitive about a particular buzzword, but letting these other topics slide completely.

Then, of course, there’s the whole “legitimate rape” thing. On August 19th Todd Akin, Republican nominee for the state of Missouri Todd, told KTVI-TV that “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Now I’m no Biology major, but I have friends who are, and none of them can back up his claims. His words have, of course, created quite the uproar on the internet. Jezebel compiled a very thorough “Official Guide to Legitimate Rape,” which compiles the ways in which the word and act have been portrayed in past years. I strongly recommend checking it out.

Finally, game designer James Desborough wrote a post this past June entitled “In Defence of Rape.” After admitting that the title is instigative at best, he, and this is a direct quote, states “Rape or attempted rape is a f-cking awesome plot element, one of many.”

Gordon and I talked about this one as well, and the issue is, at the heart of his argument, not wrong. The gist of what he’s saying is [and I quote Gordon] “Look, rape can be an effective and powerful storytelling element, so long as it isn’t trivialized.” And that’s not something I can disagree with.

What I can disagree with is his statement that “I’m not prepared to take spurious claims about ‘rape culture’ etc at face value without something substantive to back them up.” It’s one that he uses to defend his argument, lumping “rape culture” in with the “‘all men are bastards’ argument.” I don’t see what can be more substantive than the gigabytes of rape porn on the internet. I mean, it’s not like it’s hiding or anything. If some weirdo gets off on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then that’s one instance, but the people creating rape porn for a very large audience is not.

Rape is, as ever, a hotly debated issue. While we can always say that people are being too sensitive, the fact is that it is a very real, legitimate act that happens more than once a minute. It’s not something to be made light of, and especially not something to “jokingly threaten” someone with. It is also not something that can simply be thrown around in speech without strong knowledge of what’s being talked about.

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Posted in Comedy, internet, language, pornography, sex

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Stars Earn Stripes (Is a Terrible, Awful, Idiotic Abomination)

Posted on August 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

When I was watching the bad acid trip that the Brits were passing off as the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I saw an ad for an upcoming NBC reality show called Stars Earn Stripes.

For those of you too lazy to watch the YouTube video, Stars Earn Stripes is essentially a collection of B and C level celebrities (and Terry Crews) who are put through elements of basic military training and then tasked with carrying out “missions” (i.e. blow stuff up).

Naturally, the reaction of both myself and everyone I was watching with went a little something like this:

Ironically, this is one of the “missions”…

Despite the ad touting that “In the end, it’s all about understanding one thing… true bravery… It’s about honoring our veterans and our law enforcement officers…”.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a show where a bunch of people are given a couple months of watered down military training in an environment more or less free from danger and label it as comparable to the pain, sacrifices, stress, and general hardship of the actual military is about as far as you can get from honoring them. One of the guys I saw the commercial with had been in the military himself, stationed in Afghanistan, and he asserted that the idea of the show was offensive (as did everyone else in the room). Indeed, restoring some faith in humanity, the reaction of pretty much everyone to Stars Earn Stripes has been more or less this:

Marking the first time comments on a YouTube Video have been mostly intelligent and well-reasoned…

Let’s break it down here. Stars Earn Stripes is presenting:

  1. A Sanitized View of War
  2. A Glamorized View of War
  3. An Insult to Anyone who is or ever has Been Involved in War

First, let’s address the sanitizing or “white-washing”, as some critics are calling it. Stars Earn Stripes still has ten days to air, however, I think it’s safe to say that the actual decisions and consequences on the show are nothing like what they are in reality. The ad boasts that they will use “Real Explosions” and “Live Ammo”, as if this somehow adds weight or danger to the show. You what other shows have been using live ammo and real explosions for years?

Mythbusters

Deadliest Warrior (Sorry I couldn’t find a Gif for this)

…Or pretty much any show having anything to do with guns and explosions…

See, the celebrities might be in some danger- but hardly anything that you can’t find on other shows, and nothing on the level of what combat soldiers have to deal with. On top of this, I’m guessing that the celebrities aren’t going to actually kill anyone, or have to grapple with the moral and psychological ramifications of doing so. In fact, the celebrities will never have to worry about any of the basic aspects of military service that soldiers are expected to deal with- constant danger, the possibility of being disabled (if not killed or captured or tortured) for life, the possibility of killing and innocent civilian by accident, or (for the female contestants) the rampant problem of rape. Terry Crews is a tough guy, I’m sure, but I have my doubts as to how he’d react actually witnessing someone (on any side of the conflict) killed. Let’s face the facts, Stars Earn Stripes is not going to show you bodies in all their gory reality. This isn’t war- this is Hollywood.

Second, let’s talk about the glamorization we’re sure to see hear. Of course Stars Earn Stripes will present the celebrities having little breakdowns, or getting dusty or bruised, but even John McClane got pretty trashed in Die Hard.

But the military isn’t just concussion grenades and contusions- there’s plenty of… well- boredom to it. I’m not saying this to put down the armed forces, I’m just trying to offer an accurate picture here. There are toilets to be scrubbed, mess halls to be cleaned, uniformed to be creased and beds to be made. There’s paperwork and basic maintenance. Are we gonna see the Stars Earn Stripes celebrities get chewed out for not having left six inches between their blankets and their sheets? I doubt it.

Thirdly, the combination of the previously mentioned points creates a completely and wholly inaccurate picture of the conditions the men and women of the military find themselves in. Stars Earn Stripes isn’t about the military, it’s about a highly fetishized aspect of war. And make no mistake- we’re not talking about just the military here- we’re talking about war. Without the past decade or so of nonstop conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, it’s highly doubtful that Stars Earn Stripes would even exist, after all, what’s the point of doing a show about the military if you can’t jam it full of explosions? An almost assured side-effect of this lousy and poorly thought-out attempt to “honor” the troops (i.e. make money off of them and their hardships) is the glorification of war. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most dogged pacifist or hard-line advocate of “just cause”- we all know that war itself is not something that should be portrayed this way. Maybe you think war is wrong, maybe you think war is right- you never think war is pretty. As William Tecumseh Sherman, perhaps the most brutal general of the Civil War, put it “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell.”

The guy who burned Atlanta to the ground just by glaring at it would know….

It cheapens war. In the off chance that you want to hear my full rant about this, here’s the link. The simple version is that this drastic level of ignorance when it comes to the bloodshed- you know, the actual war is not only an insult to the military, but to any and all victims of war, and a direct attack upon the basic decency and dignity of humanity at large.

I’d say that NBC’s heart is in the right place, only I don’t think that’s true. I think this show is a calculated plan to manipulate emotions and capitalize off of human suffering. This has nothing to do with honoring anyone- this is about lining wallets.

Again, to NBC I submit this as my closing remark:

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Posted in advertisement, America, media, money, news, politics, television

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“Rape”

Posted on June 30, 2011 by | 13 comments

Three days ago a very close friend of mine and I were watching the StarCraft II podcast The State of the Game, an episode of which was specifically discussing foul language and the professional gaming scene.1 I turned to him and casually asked him what his stance on the subject was, a question which began a debate that lasted the better part of an hour.

This post is very difficult for me to write. I face the challenge of having to fairly represent our respective opinions, and I worry I will portray our separate viewpoints with a bias of some sort. In spite of this, I will try to press on and do my best.

Our discussion was, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, on the usage of the word “rape,” specifically in the context of the gaming community. To those perhaps unfamiliar with the terminology, the second entry on Urban Dictionary reads: “To utterly defeat another person in any form of competitive activies [sic].”2  An example of it being used would be someone saying to his friends, in the aftermath of a victorious Halo match, “We just raped those guys.”

My standpoint being that the word shouldn’t be used in this manner, my first point was one that INcontroL3 (Geoff Robinson) made, that its usage is harmful to e-sports in that it lowers the community in the eyes of others. My friend’s response [hereafter referred to as T] was that the context needs to be taken into account; if the word is being used in a setting where everyone fully understands the meaning behind the word [i.e. a StarCraft II stream] then there shouldn’t be any problem.

Outside of that specific context, T pointed out that language is an ever-changing thing, a sentiment I couldn’t, and can’t, disagree with. We give words both meaning and connotation, therefore it is fully within our power to change the words if we’d like. He went so far as to say that the word “rape” has already changed, fully appropriated by the gaming community. My argument was that although this may be the case, this change certainly didn’t need to occur. I wanted to address this trend in popular culture, the inclination to forever push our boundaries [moral and otherwise], but that would have been off topic and is for another time.

Similar to that point, however, I stressed that the word was chosen for a reason. A counterpoint to what he said about “rape” losing its meaning, I brought up the fact that it has such strength about it. It’s a loaded word, and was chosen for its level of offensiveness. Just because you’re no longer stating that you are going to sexually attack another person doesn’t erase the original sentiment behind the word choice.

Lastly, and what many of you may have been thinking while reading this, is that the word “rape” has such potential to offend. Those who have been or personally know rape victims may be very hurt by hearing the word thrown around so casually. A point against hypersensitivity was then made by T: we use much more violent terms such as “kill” and “murder” in regards to video games, so why is there never any outcry made concerning those who have had friends or family murdered?

Furthermore, there is a case to be made for discernment. T placed a lot of emphasis on the ability of the average person to know what the context behind the word is. If someone involved in a contest of any kind [be it video games or basketball] uses the word “rape” and directs it at their opponent then it is immediately assumed that they don’t mean the actual definition of the word. When I once again brought up those who were offended we were brought full circle to his point about the evolution of language.

T reminded me that language is in a state of continual development, and at the very least we are in a transitional period. I argued back that if this transition is going to offend and hurt others, then it would be better if it didn’t happen.  There is also the matter of those same people being hurt and offended even after the transition has fully taken place.

After all was said and done we agreed on a few points, yet it was apparent that on others we would remain divided. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary4, the Latin word “rapere” simply mean to “seize, carry off by force, abduct”;  it wasn’t until the 15th century that the more sexual aspects of the word began to be used. It may be that a few years down the line the word “rape” is thrown around as casually as “beat.” My stance, however, was never that words can change their meaning, but that sometimes they shouldn’t have to.


1. Source: http://blip.tv/sotg/starcraft-2-state-of-the-game-ep41-5229247 [starts again {was discussed earlier} at around 1:50:50]

2. Source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rape

3. If you really want to know who this guy is: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/INcontroL

4. Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=rape&searchmode=none

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Posted in language, video games

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